Category: Devotional Thoughts

Posted on

Anchored in Truth

anchor (Small) Our Pastors have been leading us on Wednesday nights to consider Scripture as the Authority for our lives.  It is becoming more difficult in our culture not to invest our feelings — especially if we are not in the Scriptures, with the final authority for life.  We plod along counseling with ourselves making decisions based on how we feel about this or that outcome. I find when I counsel with myself the questions I ask are aimed at what is the easiest, most convenient, most comfortable, least demanding course to take. 

Beyond that, the trouble with relying on my feelings as the anchor for my life is that they do not hold steady! They are fickle and change in a moment without good reason — or any reason!  I can “feel” disciplined and self-controlled in the morning and decide that it is right to make healthy eating choices as a way to honor the temple of the Holy Spirit.  That feeling can sustain me for awhile and then come the afternoon hours and my mind begins to bring me new counsel!  I begin to “feel” different than I did during the morning.  Now, I think it is time to reward myself and indulge my desire for junk food.  That “feels right and true” because the decision is based on the change that has occurred from morning to afternoon. 

The path of following feelings is like being lost on the back roads of West Virginia–you wind and wind and get nowhere.  Counseling with my thoughts and feelings is disappointing because they are not unchanging absolutes as we find in Scripture.  The unchanging, sufficient Word of God is authoritative!  Soaking and submitting to God’s thoughts make for a straighter more direct path through life.

I was reminded of D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ warning regarding making your feelings your god.

“Avoid the mistake of concentrating overmuch upon your feelings. Above all, avoid the terrible error of making them central…for you will be doomed to be unhappy.  What we have in the Bible is Truth; it is not an emotional stimulus…and it is as we apprehend and submit ourselves to the truth that the feelings follow.  I must never ask myself in the first instance:  What do I feel about this?  The first question is, Do I believe it?”  ((D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Its Cure, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1965, reprinted 2001), 20.))

May today be the day when rather than asking myself what I feel about this or that–I ask, “Lord, based on your Word–the anchor for my life, what must I believe about this?”

Posted on

The Gospel in 6 Minutes

I have been in Acts 4 today.  I am thrilled by the energy and insight that is bubbling out of the Spirit filled believers.  Peter’s sermon has struck religious leaders so that they could say nothing–they realize that Peter and John are “unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.”   In one statement Peter boldly asserted that “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”  (Acts 4:12)

Right after I finished studying, I ran across this 6 minute summary of the good news of Jesus by a present day pastor.  Do you have 6 minutes to spare?

Posted on

Stopping the Spread of…

spread “What are we going to do with these men,” they asked. “Everybody living in Jerusalem knows they have done an outstanding miracle, and we cannot deny it. But to stop this thing from spreading any further among the people, we must warn these men to speak no longer to anyone in this name.”  Then they called them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.  But Peter and John replied, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”  (Acts 4:16-20)

Well, the kids are back at school and that means it is time to think about ways to stop the spread of that school stuff that wants to come home and live with you!  The CDC has posted the following recommendations: frequent hand washing, avoiding close contact and staying home when you are sick.  Okay, am I the only one who thinks the germs from school laugh when they read this list?  They manage to infiltrate no matter how hard I seek to stop the spread!

As I read this passage in Acts, it sounded like the Sadducees were employed by the CDC!  These self-protective agnostics were also trying to stop something from spreading!  What were they trying to stop?  Peter had seen a crippled beggar and in an act of kindness healed him in the name of Jesus.  It was the spread of the “Jesus germ” that the Sadducees sought to stop.  Their strategy was to get the apostles to stop speaking–the thought was that if they could quiet the apostles this spreading kindness–this spreading healing might also stop!  Does that strike you as odd?  With previously uncharacteristic boldness, the apostles responded to the Sadducees in effect, “It’s too late, we’re sorry, we are already infected and we can’t help but spread this!” 

R. Kent Hughes shares an account from our own history of a man who was spreading the same germ!

Peter Cartwright was a great circuit-riding Methodist preacher in Illinois.  An uncompromising man, he had come north from Tennessee because of his opposition to slavery.  One Sunday morning when he was scheduled to preach, his deacons told him that President Andrew Jackson was in the congregation.  Knowing Cartwright was used to saying whatever he felt God wanted him to say, regardless of how people might react, they warned him not to say anything that would offend the chief executive.  He stood up to preach and said, “I understand President Andrew Jackson is here.  I have been requested to be guarded in my remarks.  Andrew Jackson will go to Hell if he does not repent!”  The audience was shocked.  They wondered how the President would respond to this, but after the service the told Cartwright, “Sir, if I had a regiment of men like you, I could whip the world.” (( R. Kent Hughes, Acts The Church Afire, Crossways Books, 64))

Interestingly enough these Spirit infected Jesus followers were on a world mission–not to whip it but to win it for the Jesus that they had come to devotedly adore!  This “thing” that the Sadducees tried to stop is unstoppable–it is not something–it is someone–the Sovereign Lord of the Universe who is on mission!

Posted on

Is change really possible?

 potter Yesterday, I launched a 12 week fall Bible study at my church.  About 20 women gathered and there was much excitement as we opened chapter 1 and began to unearth the gems contained there.  I am glad to be studying with these women and eager to consider the essential role of the Holy Spirit in spreading the good news about Jesus. Luke is so precise–such a researcher–and committed historian.  He records the events that allow us to observe people  being changed from the inside out!  When thinking about that change I remembered these thoughtful words:

“Is it really possible to change?…The word “really” is the issue.  In many people’s minds, change must be nearly complete–at least dramatic–or it doesn’t count…If efforts to restore a drab marriage lead only to a flicker of warmth, then perhaps it hasn’t really changed…Evangelicals sometimes expect too much or, to put it more precisely, we look for a kind of change that God hasn’t promised…We manage to interpret biblical teaching to support our longing for perfection. 

As a result, we measure our progress by standards we will never meet until heaven…We therefore claim God’s power as the guarantee of total change from pressure to peace, from disappointment to joy–and then live with an intolerable burden that either crushes us with despair or requires us to pretend we are better than we are.  The idea that peace and joy might merely support us during times of struggle and sorrow rather than eliminate those times is not appealing. 

 We want to do away with the necessary pain of living in a disappointing world as imperfect people. We insist on experiencing neither pain nor failure, so when the inevitable happens, it becomes reason for discouragement. But there are unnecessary problems that develop when we insist that necessary pain be eliminated…If we were convinced that the trauma of learning to trust God would really change us, we might be willing to endure it.  But real change is available now; it’s just not the kind of change we want. We insist that the real change that heaven will bring (an end to all pain) be ours today.  That insistence is the problem that we must overcome if real change that’s possible now is to occur.” ((Larry Crabb, Inside Out, NavPress, 1988, 203-205))

O Father, you are the Potter; I am the clay–it has never occurred to me before that my desire to change–my hopes for moral renovation might be rushing your timetable–or that it springs from a root of pride that wants to look better in other’s eyes right now!  I sense, that through Acts you will teach me to want the change you want to do in me!  What an adventure it is to live under the molding influence of your Spirit.  Amen

Posted on

You are free!

When we Americans think of “being free”, we usually mean throwing off all constraints.  If we tried to picture what freedom feels like it would be:

  • like your caged pet acts when you finally get home from work and let the gate open!
  • like your toddler acts when you are trying to change their diaper and they manage to wriggle free!
  • like the relief of coming home after a 10 hour work day and pulling off your panty hose!
  • like a student feels when the last school bell of the day rings.
  • like you and your college buddies 4-wheeling over previously undiscovered muddy trails

What does the Bible mean when it speaks of freedom?

  • “When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness.” Romans 6:20
  • “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”  John 8:36
  • “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”  Galatians 5:1
  • “Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God.” 1 Peter 2:16
  • “Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak.”  1 Corinthians 8:9
  • “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”  2 Corinthians 3:17

“Biblical freedom is never spiritual anarchy or a new ability to enjoy forbidden things.  We’re released from bondage to sin and death and the law, and we’re liberated for obedience in the Spirit — from a lower bondage, for a higher one.  That’s why freedom in Christ leads directly in Scripture to truly loving others.  We’re free from grim, duty–driven spirituality…free from the tyranny of needing others’ approval…free from the darkness of guilt that blankets our souls…free from the quicksand of sin’s power…Our freedom to truly love highlights what I like to call the difference between adolescent freedom and mature freedom.

  • Adolescent freedom asks only, What am I free from?

Mature freedom asks also, What am I free for?

  • Adolescent freedom asks only, Is it forbidden?

Mature freedom asks also, Is it helpful?

  • Adolescent freedom embraces the liberty “to do my own thing.”

Mature freedom embraces the liberty “to do Christ’s thing.”

  • Adolescent freedom often confuses legalism with obedience

Mature freedom knows not only the exhilaration of being free from the wrong master,

 but also the greater exhilaration of being enslaved to the right Master.” 

Dwight Edwards, Revolution Within, WaterBrook Press, 2oo2, 162-3.

Posted on

Spurgeon on Empty Boats

August 29 Morning
“Have mercy upon me, O God”
Psalm 51:1images When one of God’s choice servants, William Carey was suffering from a dangerous illness, the inquiry was made, “If this sickness should prove fatal, what passage would you select as the text for your funeral sermon?” He replied, “Oh, I feel that such a poor sinful creature is unworthy to have anything said about him; but if a funeral sermon must be preached, let it be from the words, ‘Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions’.” In the same spirit of humility he directed in his will that the following inscription and nothing more should be cut on his gravestone:

WILLIAM CAREY, BORN AUGUST 17th, 1761: DIED-
“A wretched, poor, and helpless worm
On Thy kind arms I fall.”

Only on the footing of free grace can the most experienced and most honored of the saints approach their God. The best of men are conscious above all others that they are men at best. Empty boats float high, but heavily laden vessels are low in the water; mere professors can boast, but true children of God cry for mercy upon their unprofitableness. We need the Lord to have mercy upon our good works, our prayers, our preachings, our offerings, and our living sacrifices. The blood was not only sprinkled on the doorposts of Israel’s houses, but upon the sanctuary, the mercy-seat, and the altar, because as sin intrudes upon our holiest things, the blood of Jesus is needed to purify them from defilement. If mercy is needed to be exercised towards our duties, what shall be said of our sins? How sweet the remembrance that inexhaustible mercy is waiting to be gracious to us, restore our backslidings, and make our broken bones rejoice!

From Morning & Evening by Charles Spurgeon, revised and updated by Alistair Begg (Crossway, 2003)

Posted on

The Dancing Life

untitled “The word Christian”, writes Eugene Peterson, “means different things to different people.  To one person it means a stiff, uptight, inflexible way of life, colorless and unbending.  To another it means risky, surprised-filled venture, lived tiptoe at the edge of expectation.   Either of these pictures can be supported with evidence…But if we restrict ourselves to biblical evidence, only the second image can be supported: the image of the person living zestfully, Leap_Of_Faith_by_Lawofattractionexploring every experience–pain and joy, enigma and insight, fulfillment and frustration–as a dimension of human freedom, searching through each for sense and grace.  If we get our information from the biblical material, there is no doubt that the Christian life is a dancing, leaping, daring life.” (( Eugene Peterson, Traveling Light (Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard, 1988), 57-58.))Â